{"id":10486,"date":"2026-04-24T14:00:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/michael-stipe-solo-debut\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T14:00:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:00:23","slug":"michael-stipe-solo-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/michael-stipe-solo-debut\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Stipe\u2019s Solo Debut Will Be Out This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2024\/06\/BR109641_T0iTy7J3_20240614021324-scaled.jpg\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1994\" alt=\"\"><figcaption>Michael Stipe performs with R.E.M. on June 13, 2024 (photo: Bennett Raglin \/ Getty Images for Songwriters Hall Of Fame).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe stopped by <em>The Late Show With Stephen Colbert <\/em>last night (April 23) to confirm that his long-in-the-works solo debut will be released \u201cat the end of the year.\u201d Stipe also debuted a song from it, \u201cThe Rest of Ever,\u201d with backing from the show\u2019s house band, Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine.<\/p>\n<p>During his couch segment, the heavily bearded 66-year-old vocalist said one of the album\u2019s songs \u201cis the sound of a tree hearing itself for the first time. My friend recorded a tree in my backyard in Georgia and played it back to itself.\u201d Stipe said the ensuing song \u201csounds like Daft Punk\u201d and that he reworked the lyrics to the 250-year-old sea shanty \u201cDrunken Sailor\u201d to pair with it.<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2026\/04\/king-gizzard-synth-album\/\">King Gizzard &amp; The Lizard Wizard Wraps Synth LP<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2026\/04\/deep-cut-friday-you-cant-talk-to-the-dude-by-jonathan-richman\/\">Deep Cut Friday: \u2018You Can\u2019t Talk to the Dude\u2019 by Jonathan Richman<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2026\/04\/the-milk-carton-kids-are-alright\/\">The Milk Carton Kids Are Alright<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"ERgxcNyneYI\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>He continued, \u201cI misheard what I thought was part of the original song \u2014 \u2018tie him to the mast and shave his belly.\u2019 And then my part comes in, which is \u2018duct tape, donkey ears, jelly wellies early in the morning.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Addressing R.E.M.\u2019s 2024 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2024\/06\/r-e-m-s-four-original-members-reunite\/\">reunion<\/a> at the Songwriters Hall of Fame, during which its four original members performed together for the first time in 17 years, Stipe noted, \u201cI\u2019m just very lucky that we are best friends. You know, we split the band up in 2011. We remain best friends. We have dinners with each other. We text each other all the time. When we\u2019re working on projects, we invite each other to participate. They\u2019re friends for life and my best friends. I\u2019m really honored to have that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Colbert also asked Stipe about his reaction to Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy\u2019s R.E.M. tribute project, through which they\u2019ve performed the band\u2019s early albums in their entirety since launching in 2024. The same core four R.E.M. members <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2025\/02\/rem-reunion-athens-georgia\/\">took the stage together<\/a> again in February 2025 in Athens, Ga., when Shannon and Narducy rolled through the band\u2019s longtime home base.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m like the biggest fan of those guys doing that because I\u2019ve never gotten to hear those songs performed live,\u201d Stipe noted. \u201cI was always in the middle of it [but] those songs are in my DNA. So, I\u2019m hearing a part of me thrown back but interpreted by someone who I really admire and love. Michael Shannon and Jason \u2014 they\u2019re incredible guys.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stipe admitted to being \u201cfreaked out\u201d prior to joining the fun that night in Athens. \u201cI had told Michael that I wanted to jump up for the song \u2018Pretty Persuasion,\u2019 which I wrote when I was 22. It was basically about trans rights [or] what we would now call trans rights.  I was backstage and I kind of got like a little freaked out. [Guitarist] Peter Buck had been jumping up with them. He loves to play guitar, so he was up for several song  and he said, just go. Just get up there. Just do it. So I was like, okay Peter. I jumped up and then [bassist] Mike Mills was side of stage and he jumped up to sing background. And about halfway through the song, I heard a tambourine over my right shoulder and I turned around and [drummer] Bill Berry was standing there. So, we reunited for half a song that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After Colbert suggested comedian David Cross should play Stipe in an R.E.M. biopic due to the similarity of their large beards, Stipe instead proposed Billie Eilish, who he then said had once held a door open for him at a New York restaurant without him realizing who she was.<\/p>\n<p>Stipe didn\u2019t reveal many further details about his solo album, from which a handful of potential songs have emerged over the past several years. \u201c[It\u2019s my first ever solo record and I\u2019m really pleased about that.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"kAA5FlnQ24U\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/spinmagazine.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Stipe performs with R.E.M. on June 13, 2024 (photo: Bennett Raglin \/ Getty Images for Songwriters Hall Of Fame). R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe stopped by The Late Show With&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4386,6,24,2325],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-michael-stipe","category-news","category-pushly","category-r-e-m"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}